Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects, for example, as discussed in detail in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,038 and 6,211,626, incorporated herein by reference.
In lighting systems, such as those that include LED-based light sources, it is desirable to have control over one or more light sources of the lighting system. For example, it may be desirable to have on/off control of one or more light sources of the lighting system and/or control of one or more lighting parameters of one or more of the light sources. More particularly, it may be desirable to have control of a lighting scene, lighting direction, lighting color, illumination intensity, beam width, beam angle, and/or other parameters of one or more of the light sources.
Direct specification during configuration of the one or more light sources enables selection of desirable lighting parameters. However, such direct specification may suffer from one or more drawbacks such as lack of ability to fine-tune applied lighting, lack of flexibility for adapting to newly introduced environmental objects and/or relocation of existing objects, and/or lack of tailoring of lighting parameters and/or adjustments to specific objects. Control switches connected to a mains power supply also enable control of one or more light sources. However, such control switches may suffer from one or more drawbacks such as requiring connection to the mains power supply, which may present constraints on where the control switches may be installed. Smart phones and tablets also enable control of one or more light sources. However, such control may suffer from one or more drawbacks such as the need to locate the remote device to control the light source and/or interference with other activities of the remote device. Additional and/or alternative drawbacks of direct specification, control switches, smart phones, and/or tablets may be presented.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide methods and apparatus that enable control of one or more properties of light output and that optionally overcome one or more drawbacks of existing user interfaces.